Preston Evans
ENGL 120W
03/30/14
Readefined; An Age of Decline?
Is reading dead? I remember when one of my favorite book stores in Nashville, Davis Kidd, “turned its final page.” After thirty years of being one of Nashville’s largest and most prominent booksellers, the Green Hills storefront, nestled in the front corner of the mall, was forced to close its doors on November 11, 2010. I recall many days spent running up and down the hall of books, intrigued and wide-eyed at all the information that was there, all the knowledge. Listening to samples of CDs in the music section or wading through those velvet ropes that guided the bustling line to checkout. Actually buying a printed book from a real human. It seems funny now… I remember on warm summer nights spending time with friends just outside its doors, baby-faced and smoking cigarettes because it made us feel cooler than we actually were. To anyone that had the pleasure of experiencing this magical, wondrous play-place of books and art, Davis Kidd probably conjures up gleefully nostalgic memories for you, too. And so the closure of this store was treated like the death of a close friend, and Nashville lost a fine bookseller.
So, is it? Is reading dead? I’d like to think no. I’d like to think that we, as human beings and as building blocks for society, are at least intelligent enough to see the importance of reading and of expanding our knowledge through the gathering and interpretation of information we find in books. I’d also like to think that the legacies of stores like Davis Kidd are able to live on. Some quick statistics may suggest that book reading has steadily declined in the past several years with the large amount of readily accessible information on the Internet. According to an article in Publisher’s Weekly, printed book sales fell by 2.5% last year. This puny percentage may not seem like a lot, but book sales dropped from 620 million units in 2012 to 501.6 million units in 2013. That’s almost 120 million less book that were bought in 2013 than in 2012 [1]. And further data suggests that this declining trend will only steepen in coming years.
However, just because sales of physical book copies have gone down does not necessarily mean that people aren’t reading. According to Pew Internet and American Life Project, about one-fifth (that’s 21%) of adults have read an e-book in the past year [2]. E-books are digital books that can be bought through the Web, delivered to a device such as a computer or Kindle, and read page by page on said device. These e-books allow for readers to enjoy hundreds, even thousands, of books at the touch of a button and in the palm of their hand. Forget lugging around heavy textbooks; download them to your tablet or computer. Furthermore, the average e-book reader has read approximately 24 books in the past year, while the average print book consumer has only read 15.
Something I find immensely impressive with many e-book devices is the access to free classic novels and some contemporary writings all consolidated within the device. Once, on a plane, I was able to access Dickens’ 1861 masterpiece Great Expectations on my mom’s Kindle. I was delighted, and not only because Great Expectations is my favorite Dickens novel, but because of the infinite possibilities that this little handheld screen just presented to me. I’m hovering thousands of feet above the ground and yet was able to find a 544-page novel sans any sort of Internet connection or Web interaction in the blink of an eye. Simply amazing. What’s more, efforts of Project Gutenberg offer over 45,000 free e-books online [3]. This growing accessibility to books and information via the Internet and through Kindle and similar products’ databases are allowing for an increased reading pace as well as an increased interest in reading (as those who would not necessarily have the means to buy a book before can now afford them).
Still, nothing can strip the integrity of the printed book. Nothing quite compares to holding and flipping those pages between your index finger and thumb and the smell of a fresh book (is that just me? I would hope not). Even if Davis Kidd and many other libraries suffered a marginal loss from Internet accessibility and affordability, many libraries and bookstores have integrated the technology into their business models. I have a family friend who actually goes to the local bookstore to buy digital e-books from a vendor. This way, he says, he does not miss the “personal interaction and communication that is necessary and pleasurable when buying a new book.” Similarly, online databases like JSTOR require a small subscription fee in order to access the articles and works they contain. These are not websites; they are libraries. They are digital, and they are different, but they are libraries nonetheless. In fact, the American Library Association reports that the number of visits to public libraries in the US increased by 61% from the mid 1990s to the early 2000s [4].
Reading hasn’t died, nor is it in the process of dying; it has simply changed. We share ideas and gather information in new ways today, and as a result we are finding ourselves more connected and more intelligent than ever before. So read on, avid booklovers, be it digitally or physically, because it seems that books and libraries won’t be tarnished by the so-called “information glut” of today’s media.
2- http://libraries.pewinternet.org/2012/04/04/the-rise-of-e-reading/
I think the topic of your essay is really interesting. Different from many people’s cry for the death of physical books, you offered the opinion that reading is changing instead of dying. I like your last paragraph especially; it’s simple but thoughtful summary of your essay. However, I think you can move this sentence – “reading has not died, nor is it in the process of dying; it has simply changed” up a little bit so that readers can get your thesis earlier. Otherwise the first few paragraphs may be a little misleading as Sara said. Also, I think there is some jump of thoughts between some paragraphs. Maybe you can add some transitions to them.
Preston, I was really drawn by the subject matter of this essay. I found myself wanting to keep reading and find out what you thought about the state of reading in our society. A couple of points to work on though: You lost me a little bit in the middle during the e-books paragraphs. At those points I almost felt as though you were advertising for e-books over other methods of reading instead of tackling the main argument. At other points, I felt as thought the opening sentences of your paragraphs were a little misleading, mainly the second to last one, where you state that “nothing can grip the integrity of a printed book” but kind of start going in a different direction. Definitely continue using a lots of evidence and rational argument to support your thesis though. I think this essay could be a really intriguing one, and one that sparks a lot of talk!